Elon Musk has had a bad time of it in the past few weeks, trying to contend with a press corps that has reported three fires involving his Model S sedans without much context as to how that number compares to gas vehicle fires.

As has been his habit when challenged in the past, Musk has sought to fight bad press with math, saying that if you look at the statistics, the Model S is far less likely to catch fire than a gas powered car. The three vehicle fires mean the likelihood of a Tesla catching fire is about 1 in 6,333. Conventional vehicles, Musk notes, catch fire at a rate of about 1 in 1,350 per year.

Every Model S that has caught fire so far has done so as the result of a collision — the first hit a pole, the second crashed through a wall, and the third hit a trailer hitch laying in the road.

As anyone who watches Mythbusters can tell you, car crashes just don't cause fires very often. Only about 4 percent of vehicle fires are caused by collisions, so the actual rate of crash-induced fires, which would be a more reasonable metric, is far lower than the Model S at about 1 in 32,603.

So Musk's safety claims are a bit overblown. But does that make the Model S less safe?

Probably not. Nobody was injured in any of these crashes (even though the second one was a pretty heinous accident). Tesla has been quick to point out that in all cases special fire shielding worked as designed to stop the blaze from spreading to the rest of the car.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently conducting its own investigation into whether the Model S is particularly prone to burst into flames after a collision, so the smart bet would be to wait and see what the experts find rather than trying to draw a shaky conclusion from three crashes.